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I remember when John Kasich was a Republican. Ah, those were the days….

And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.

— Luke 16:9

I suppose he doesn’t think of it as Selling Out so much as Buying In.

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Presumably because the last one worked out so well. Eventually Mexico is going to wake up to the fact that these ‘caravans’ headed for the U.S. border merely make Trump’s case for a wall and cause problems only for Mexicans.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Audacious Epigone takes a Steve Sailer meme and runs with it.

The cliche isn’t just raining down from above, it’s miasmically rising up from below.

The graphs are very enlightening.

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In other words, they got caught enforcing the Narrative, and had to backtrack.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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Because people are too damned stupid to know how much to eat unless told what to do by some authority?

A demonstration of how much a certain class of people despises everybody else.

It’s people like them that cause unrest.

Read it.

When I set out to open a restaurant in San Francisco’s vibrant restaurant market, I thought I’d employ all I’ve learned from an MBA from a top school, the rigor of an engineering education and a decade and a half launching and managing some of the most successful businesses for Google and other tech companies. Furthermore, I wasn’t naive to think that I knew better than all those who’ve been tenured in the industry. I actively sought out the mentorship of many titans who’ve been generous with their time and knowledge of the industry. So I opened Tawla, a restaurant in San Francisco’s Mission district. I hoped Tawla would provide a fresh lens onto the culinary cultures of Turkey, Greece and the Levant area that is more humanizing. With food being a most humanizing lens, Tawla was a restaurant that aspired to present the home-cooked food of that region while sourcing local ingredients from farms and purveyors, creating a healthy environment for our employees where they can thrive, be reasonably priced to many, and be a good citizen in our neighborhood. In today’s San Francisco climate, that all seems like a tall order and very few restaurants that don’t belong to large restaurant groups will be able to exist without compromising on one or more of these dimensions.

Avoid cities run by Democrats. They’re great for rich people and tolerable for the tax-supported Underclass, but they have no room for real people.

John Derbyshire turns over a rock to see what crawls out.

Anyone who pays attention now understands the game being played down there. Juanita pays a sum of money to the coyotes, memorizes a sob story they feed her, rounds up her kids—or hires someone else’s from the coyotes—treks north to our border, presents herself to Border Patrol, or to immigration officers at a port of entry, regurgitates the sob story, lingers in detention a few days being interviewed and signing forms, then gets a ride to the nearest big-city bus depot.

Recently, I went to a talk by Todd Bensman, who worked intelligence at the Texas border. A regular chore for workers at those big-city bus stations, he told us, is sweeping up the piles of ankle bracelets illegals cut off as soon as they get there.

Court appearance? Yeah, right. She’s in, and will never be deported. And so are her children. Or “children.”

The Gestapo at their most pluripotent couldn’t keep track of all the illegal immigrants that seep through our porous system every year. The KGB would find it a challenge but could probably do it.

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Because the last one worked so well.

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that these were being organized by pro-Trump elements.

UPDATE: New migrant caravan in Honduras expected to head to US border: ‘We’re looking for refuge’

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Mexican authorities discovered five abandoned vehicles and at least 20 bodies at a rural location 56 miles west of McAllen, Texas, Wednesday, CNN reported.

News of the discovery came just hours after CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta reported on the area’s apparent safety and tranquility. (RELATED: Tucker Mocks ‘Renaissance Poet’ Jim Acosta For Border Wall Video)

“We’re not seeing any kind of imminent danger. There are no migrants trying to rush toward this fence here in the McAllen, Texas, area,” Acosta said in a video posted to his Twitter account Thursday. “No sign of the national emergency that [President Donald Trump] has been talking about. As a matter of fact, it’s pretty tranquil down here.”

UPDATE: ABC News Was in the Same Area As Jim Accoster, and in the Short Time They Were There, Border Patrol Caught Fifteen Illegal Immigrants Crossing the River to Illegally Enter the US

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A man who was captured on camera carrying blue lights stolen from a police car, is being sought by for questioning by detectives.

I’ll just bet he is.

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Hey, maybe we ought to have, I dunno, a wall or something.

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I’ve been meaning to post an omnibus review of all the latest indicators of California’s steady road to becoming Venezuela, which is going into high gear now that we—finally!—have a governor named Gavin (long overdue), but news items have piled up faster than human excrement on a San Francisco street (about which, see below). So just a couple of new highlights.

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But you knew that.

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These kids today….

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Well, now that you mention it….

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How about that GREAT government-provided health care! Don’t you wish we had a system like that in the U.S.?

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Sure, open the borders! Let ’em all in! What could go wrong?

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The 1976 National Emergencies Act gives presidents sweeping authority as well as allowance in federal regulations to declare an “immigration emergency” to deal with an “influx of aliens which either is of such magnitude or exhibits such other characteristics that effective administration of the immigration laws of the United States is beyond the existing capabilities” of immigration authorities “in the affected area or areas.” The basis for such an invocation generally includes the “likelihood of continued growth in the magnitude of the influx,” rising criminal activity, as well as high “demands on law enforcement agencies” and “other circumstances.”

Democrats have not objected to use of this authority regularly by past presidents, including roughly 30 such emergencies that continue to this day. Other statutes afford additional emergency powers. Indeed, a report by the Congressional Research Service in 2007 stated, “Under the powers delegated by such statutes, the president may seize property, organize and control the means of production, seize commodities, assign military forces abroad, institute martial law, seize and control all transportation and communication, regulate the operation of private enterprise, restrict travel, and, in a variety of ways, control the lives of United States citizens.”

Democrats never imagined that the Imperial Presidency would come back and bite them squarely on the butt.  They’re used to dealing with Ordinary Republican Politicians, like the Bushes or McCain or Romney, who wouldn’t dare push their power as far as it could legally go. But that was then — and this is now.

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And what did they do during the ‘Mao era’? Not one damned thing.

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Now THAT is a national emergency.

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Not really a good idea to diss the guy who has the ear of the guy who can turn your country into a sandpile.

‘Nice country you got there, Ergogan. Be a shame if anything happened to it.’

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Meet the new cuck, same as the old cuck.

Indeed.

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It might even be in English.

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Truth will out.

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If they think they can win a pissing contest with Trump, they’d better think again.

Nice country you got there, Erdogan. Be a shame if something happened to it.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

If you raise the price of something, people buy less of it. I should think that even dimwit Democrats would know that.

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There has been a tremendous pushback in recent years against what are broadly known as “grievance studies”; a loose collection of academic disciplines characterized by their emphasis on oppressive social and political institutions and the marginalized identities they victimize. The philosophical outlook underpinning these disciplines tend to be portrayed in a less ambiguous manner: it is typically described as some combination of Marxist politics with postmodern skepticism, and has been variously termed “cultural Marxism,” postmodern neo-Marxism, the New Left, and so on.

In his book Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism From Rousseau to Foucault, the philosopher Stephen Hicks argues that post-Kantian thinking gradually led to the adoption of ever more skeptical epistemologies. At the same time, a growing number of intellectuals came to align with Marxist and socialist political perspectives. This leads Hicks to the claim that postmodern philosophy is the perpetuation of Marxist politics through other philosophical means. He argues that there is a clear through line where the scientific pretensions of classical Marxism gradually gave way to the irrationalist critiques of the cultural Marxists, and finally converged with the overtly skeptical epistemologies of the postmodernists. Specifically, postmodern skepticism was adopted as a philosophical backdoor to justifying socialism along largely emotive lines. To paraphrase a memorable quote in Hicks’s book, postmodern Leftists came to say feelings were all that mattered and their feelings demanded socialism. Hicks goes on to argue that this epistemological skepticism and cultural Marxist/Socialist politics is the philosophical wellspring of the various identity politics movements ascendant today.

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It sounds ridiculous. But look at what’s happening in the United Kingdom, where the government runs the health system.

To combat the country’s obesity epidemic, British officials just proposed limiting the number of calories permitted in thousands of foods sold in restaurants and grocery stores. A single-serving pizza would be allowed a maximum of 928 calories. A savory pie, no more than 695.

Invasive measures like these might sound like the stuff of a totalitarian dystopia. But when the government foots the bill for our medical expenses, it has a strong financial incentive to micromanage our health.

When the government is paying for your health care, then any decision that affects your health becomes the business of the government. This same overreach underlies the apparently universal power of the government under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. All it takes is five Harvard Law graduates in Washington and you’re screwed.

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Proglodytes never imagined that the Imperial Presidency might turn around and bite them squarely on the bitt.

Jefferson rightly said that a government can only do things for you to the extent that it can do things to you.

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California, land of fruits and nuts….

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Yesterday, Trump administration officials met with Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats to negotiate about the border wall. Attempting to explain why this wall is so important to American citizens, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen did a presentation which listed how many criminal aliens have been detained at the border, plus drug smugglers, terrorists, human traffickers, and various other undesirables. This meeting became the headline story at Fox News: “Pelosi, Nielsen clashed during border-security meeting: ‘I reject your facts,’ House speaker said, according to report.”

That seems to me to be the basic principle of the Democrat Party: ‘I reject your facts.’

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Ever notice how these shootings always take place in areas that are very anti-gun, like California, rather than in pro-gun places like Texas?

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Thank God for those strict gun control laws, or the crime rate would skyrocket.

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Ireland is a magical place, but it’s not that magical.

Think of it as evolution in action.

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Mark ‘Uncanny Valley’ Zuckerberg strikes back.

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How’s that socialism working out for you?

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Sure, let ’em all in! What could go wrong?

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But they were thinking it.

‘Don’t hate me cause you ain’t me, fellas,’ congresswoman tweets.

Why not? She hates them because they aren’t her. Turn about is fair play.

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This is why we need a wall. Duh.

Ace of Spades has the skinny.

Think of it as evolution in action.

I am not making this up. I wish I were.

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How is this ‘powerful’? How does this differ from a mashup of twenty pictures of Nancy Pelosi?

The ‘new wave’ of Congresswomen don’t look a bit different from the ‘old wave’. They all have the same BitterBeerFace that Maxine Waters displays all the time.

Michelle Malkin blows the whistle.

Border wall opponent Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., tweeted three times between Christmas and New Year’s Eve bemoaning the plight of illegal immigrants and their children.

But not a peep was heard from Harris about the brutal shooting death of Newman, California, Police Department Cpl. Ronil Singh at the hands of a Mexican gang member illegally in the country and protected by the very sanctuary policies Harris champions.

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The reason the Scouting USA organization is facing bankruptcy is that it isn’t doing what it’s traditional customers have always wanted it to do. My brothers and I all grew up in Scouting and while we grumbled a bit we went with it because it was presented to us as a way to build good character. That is no longer true. I would actively discourage any child of mine (if I had one) or any child over which I have any influence from getting involved in Scouting USA on the grounds that the character they apparently seek to build is not one that I would encourage a young boy to acquire.

If you take a sports bar that historically has hosted the Superbowl and turn the TVs to Ice Capades instead, you can’t be surprised when nobody shows up.

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If you’re interested in the seamy side of the Crust, this is a must-read.

Otherwise, you might consider reading a good book instead.

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Thank God for those strict gun control laws, or the murder rate would be skyrocketing.

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Sometimes the old ways are best.

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Thank God for those strict gun control laws, or the murder rate would be through the roof.